Longer answer. You most definitely need to get the emails of your clients and audience. It is extremely important to your business and it's growth. Let me explain why.

Whether you are a blogger or you sell flowers in your own store, having the emails of your clients is key.

Email addresses are the equivalence of having your customer’s home phone number and in this digital age, it’s the fastest way to communicate with them. You can’t rely heavily on having just one platform to talk to your clients. No one can guarantee that any of these platforms will stay the same or even be around in a few years. Remember Myspace?

Do you have 20k followers on Instagram but don’t have an email list. Yeah, you got to get on that NOW.

I’ve seen so many companies throughout the years that have had their Facebook pages taken down, their Instagram accounts hacked, or other horrible and unthinkable acts. If your Instagram deleted tomorrow, would your company survive? Would you be able to reach your customers? How about your Facebook?

All of these followers on your social media accounts are not yours, and in short, you are on borrowed time. Algorithms, paid reach, boosting posts, they are all a thing and a thing that is preventing you from reaching your audience.

If you have been working towards building your email list, first off, that is awesome and you deserve a hell yeah! You are on your way to always having a way to get in contact with your clients. This helps you build long lasting relationships with your clients. That is the goal. Nothing wrong with that!

It’s not rocket science that if you have a blog, some of your readers might want to receive your posts through email. If you sell a product, your customer might want to know about an upcoming sale or get a sneak peek on a new product. Treat these people like the VIPs that they are.

To truly succeed at this, it goes beyond just having a sign up form on your website.

HOW TO START YOUR OWN EMAIL LIST

1. Pick A Newsletter Provider

If you are just starting out, MailChimp or MailerLite are the best free options out there. MailChimp is free up to 2000 subscribers, whilst Mailerlite starts charging after 1000. Even if you have to start paying, the monthly charges are low enough and let’s be honest…it is an investment you are going to need to put into your company. I've used both of them (and even ConvertKit) and MailerLite is my personal fave for free and I do love ConvertKit for paid. *affiliate link disclaimer*

Setting these up are very easy to do, but if you don’t have the time right now to do it, get in touch so I can help you.

To contact 5000 customers (who have already agreed to get emails from you because they love your brand) and be able to promote your product is a fantastic thing. No worrying if the algorithms are going to let your customers see your post.

2. Create Your List

To begin with, you can just create one list that everyone goes on. For most that will probably be enough. More advanced features would be branching out if you started offering distinctly different products and you might want to create different lists for said specific products. For right now though, create your list in your provider. This provides a place for your collected email addresses to go.

3. Create Your Sign-Up Form

Your provider will have a few different templates that you can edit with your brand colors and such. You can create a brand new page on your website specifically or have sign up boxes throughout your site to tell your customers why they should join. I love this post from The Middle Finger Project which talks about getting rid of the word newsletter and instead really telling your customers what they would get by signing up. You need to create a lead magnet or something to entice them to hand over their precious email address.

There are other services like SumoMe or HelloBar that allow an automatic pop-up on your site. Sometimes these can be really helpful and in most cases they also provide automatic share buttons for your content. You want people to share your content right? The easier it is to sign up, the more chances people will sign up.

4. Create Your Email Templates

Not only do you want to create a welcome email, but you want to make sure all the other email templates are within brand and make sense. So if Suzie decides she wants to unsubscribe, maybe she gets a personalized email, reminding her why she should stay. Or maybe you write a nice email and wish her luck. It’s okay if Suzie unsubscribes. Don’t take it personal (even though it’s hard). Dang Suzie!

Your welcome email should make your customers feel, well, welcome! Let them know what they can expect from you in the future.

5. Write An Email!

Once you start having people on your list, well you got to talk to them. Even if you have 3 people or 3,000, you want to communicate with them and not just to sell them stuff. You want them to feel valued. You want them to have some secret behind the scenes love, show a #wip (work in progress), chat about a topic close to your heart. Also, encourage your subscribers to send replies to your emails to show you listen. I’m guilty of not doing that enough. Decide on the frequency and stick with it. For me, I think anything more than once a week is too much.

To take it a step further, get an automation into place. If you don’t think you have the time to put this very important business step into your business, get in touch and let’s get that set up for you, like yesterday.

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